


Their Quietus Make

by Lassarina



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-15
Updated: 2007-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-30 14:47:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/pseuds/Lassarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard to resolve issues when you will not speak of them.  Things lost, tokens, and sweeping away the actions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Their Quietus Make

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an exchange round in het_challenge on LJ.

She always wears his bandanna, tucked into a pocket or twined around her wrist. The irony is incredible. Rachel gave him that bandanna the day she fell. He used it to bind a sea bird's wounds because he was ready to let her go and find Celes again. She's told him how his bandanna was the thing that encouraged her to go looking for him, how the thought of him being alive was enough to draw her out of her despair. Every time he sees the dark blue silk, it's a little pang in his heart, one that he tries to shrug away because it means so much to her.

~*~

There are days when he gets a distant expression on his face and leaves the house without telling her where he's bound. She takes up her sword—the one Leo gave her years ago when she was promoted to general—and goes out to hunt monsters. She might as well put the violence of her mood to good use defending Kohlingen from incursions, and after all, fighting is all she really knows how to do.

Every evening she examines the blade for chips and pits, and makes sure to keep it in immaculate condition. It is all she has left of him, and she is loath to lose that last little bit.

~*~

They share a living space, but not a life. Some days they barely see each other, except when they lie down in the same bed but do not touch each other, turning their backs to each other to sleep.

~*~

"Why does it make you angry?" she asks him one night. He is washing the dishes and she is clearing the table.

"Was I angry about something?" His tone is light and he smiles at her.

"The bandanna," she says, irritated by the way he tries to ignore issues. "You stare at it with such dislike." The dishes clatter as she sets them on the counter next to him with more force than is strictly necessary.

He sighs and pulls his hands out of the soapy water. She slides the plates into the water and her hand goes unbidden to the sword at her side, wrapping around the familiar grip and feeling the comfort of cold steel in her hand.

"I'm going for a walk," he says.

She waits up until one hundred hours, but he does not return. She wakes in the morning with him in the bed beside her.

~*~

His mouth is hot against her skin, his fingers insistent and knowing, while her nails raise red marks on his back that will still be there come morning. Yet even when he drives her past the point of rational thought, even when he shudders above her and his hands clench tight on her shoulders, she can feel the eyes of the dead upon them.

~*~

"She gave it to me," he says brusquely, and she pauses in the midst of drawing the whetstone along her blade.

"What?"

"The bandanna. The day she fell." He walks out of the house, the door slamming shut behind him, and she sits in her chair with the sword and whetstone forgotten in her hands, and closes her eyes against the tears that threaten.

After that, the bandanna sits neatly folded in her dresser drawer. She cannot bring herself to throw it away, but neither will she wear it if it causes him such pain.

~*~

He joins her out on patrol one day, helping her cut through the monsters. There always seem to be more of them, and with the village needing to spread farther afield to grow crops, it is important that she keep the monsters farther back.

For some reason, his presence makes her feel guilty about the memories attached to her sword. She loved Leo, and though they were lovers for over two years, she has no lovers' tokens, no notes scribbled on scraps of paper or dried flowers. They were soldiers, and her memento is a weapon of war and the memory of his blood pulsing red and hot over her hands as she cast Curaga over and over again.

~*~

She purchases a new sword at the weapons store, and hangs Leo's on the wall. Locke doesn't leave so often now, and there are nights when she falls asleep with his arm around her, feeling his breath warm on her neck.

~*~

Eventually, she packs the sword in a chest with the other weapons she has kept from their journey.

~*~

"Will you let me try something?" he asks, and the tone of his voice is too light, too casual. He is lying on his side next to her, his fingertips idly trailing along her ribs and tracing the outline of scars garnered over a lifetime in the military.

"That depends," she says warily, and he chuckles. This is the reason Gestahl never made her a diplomat: she has no patience for dancing with words.

He reaches over her and pulls open the drawer beside her bed. When his hand comes back, silk trails over her bare skin. She looks, and sees his bandanna and a green silk scarf Edgar sent her last Solstice.

"I thought..." His voice trails off, and he is looking anywhere but at her. "I thought maybe if we weren't always seeing them, that we'd...it'd be easier."

"You want to blindfold me?" She tries for neutral, but her tone comes out cold, and she could kick herself for it.

"Actually, I wanted to blindfold both of us," he says.

"All right," she says, but her muscles are tense when he gently wraps the blue silk around her eyes and ties it at the back of her head. She hears rustling as he, presumably, ties his own blindfold a moment later.

She has been blindfolded before, though never in a sexual context; all of the Empire's elite soldiers underwent training regimens designed to make them equally lethal in any possible situation, including pitch darkness for black ops missions. She is used to relying on the input from her other senses, heightening her awareness to better maneuver herself.

She is not used to being blindfolded while warm fingers trail up her arms. His lips seek hers, a bit clumsily, but she turns her head a bit to the left and they kiss slowly. His hands on her body are not so confident and clever as usual; she suspects he is far less accustomed than she to operating without one of his senses. It becomes harder to analyze the situation when his hand cups her breast, his fingertips barely flicking across her nipple. She arches toward him, her hands sliding over his shoulders, feeling familiar scars and smooth skin.

He kisses down her neck, his hand still teasing at her nipple, making her bite her lip to hold back the sounds she wants to make. The slight sting is enough of a distraction to let her think about how she will get even with him, and she slides her palm down over his chest and his flat stomach, finding the scar on his hip and following it inward until her hand curls around his cock. He moans, his breath hot against her neck. She smiles and strokes him slowly, feeling the contrast between her callused hand and the smoothness of his skin there.

His mouth closes on her nipple, his tongue flicking fast against her skin while his hand slides between her legs, slipping over skin already damp to tease her there, as well. She can't help the quiet sound she makes when his fingers slide into her slowly.

She rubs her fingertips over the head of his cock and he shivers. He rolls away, pulling her with him and up over him so that she can settle down on him slowly, his hands on her hips to steady her. It's strange to do this when she can't see, and her balance feels off in a way it never did during training.

She moves slowly to prove that she can, to prove that even with his fingers sliding between them to stroke her clit and oh gods there and she can't help the way her nails flex deep into his shoulders when he does that, she is in control of this. She bites her lip again, forcing herself to keep her movements slow, and all the while he's whispering things that would make her blush if she let herself really consider what he's saying. She's close, so close, and she's given up on control at this point. They move together, faster, his hand sliding up her body to caress her cheek and then suddenly the blindfold is gone and she sees him pulling away his own blindfold. Their eyes meet in the moment before she comes, and for once, she doesn't feel their ghosts breathing down her neck.

~*~

She always wears his bandanna, tucked into a pocket or twined round her wrist.


End file.
